After 35 years of employment, and many years of disagreement over research on air pollution and its implications for environmental regulations, Dr. James E. Enstrom, assisted by the American Center for Law and Justice, filed a federal lawsuit against various University of California and UCLA administrators in June 2012. Enstrom’scomplaint alleged that UCLA had refused to reappoint him after he engaged in successful whistleblowing against a member of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

Last week, a federal district court issued an encouraging ruling in Enstrom’s case. On March 18, United States District Judge Jesus G. Bernal signed an order denying some defendants’ motions to dismiss Enstrom’s First Amendment retaliation claims.

…Judge Bernal also found that Enstrom may have a due process right to an accounting of how UCLA spent the research and grant funds he brought into the university. Accordingly, the judge denied the motions by Jackson, Godwin, and Housel to dismiss Enstrom’s due process claim and granted him leave to amend his complaint with respect to this claim against other defendants.

In other words, Enstrom’s case will proceed, having cleared an important early hurdle. As former FIRE President and current ACLJ senior counsel David Frenchobserved, this is an important step toward vindicating Enstrom’s rights.

The full scope of Enstrom’s ordeal was detailed by FIRE when the whistleblower filed suit last year:

UCLA’s retaliation against Enstrom first became apparent in December 2009, when Enstrom discovered that UCLA had cut off his salary fund and charged his salary against his research funds without his knowledge. In February 2010, Environmental Health Sciences Chair Richard J. Jackson told Enstrom that UCLA was laying him off. Enstrom fought back and kept his job.

After UCLA’s first attempt failed, Enstrom learned of further retaliation in June 2010 when the EHS faculty (including Froines) voted not to rehire him because his “research is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department.” UCLA also invoked vague and previously unmentioned “minimum requirements,” even though his research output was similar to or greater than that of other professors in his department. Enstrom learned he was going to be “indefinitely laid off” effective June 30, 2010.

Whistleblowers against progressive agenda items are truly an endangered species, and I will continue to follow this case closely.